财政透明度与居民幸福感

Fiscal Transparency and Residents’ Happiness

一般认为,财政透明不仅有利于提高国家治理水平和增进社会福利,还可以缩小福利差距,促进社会公平。本文使用2012年和2013年中国综合社会调查(CGSS)数据库,评估了财政透明度对主观幸福感的影响。研究发现,财政透明度显著提高了中国居民的幸福感,且在克服内生性后保持稳健。而且,分群样本的估计结果表明,财政透明度对中西部、农村和低收入居民幸福感的影响显著大于东部、城镇和高收入居民,表明其有利于缩小幸福差距。最后,本文考察了财政透明度的经济影响机制,发现其主要通过提高基本公共品的投入效率与供给水平,而非增加公共支出来影响居民幸福感。而且,财政透明度对不同收入阶层人群幸福感的影响机制也存在差异,高收入阶层更关注公共品供给效率,而低收入阶层则更关心公共品供给水平。

It is generally believed that fiscal transparency is not only conducive to raising the level of national governance and social welfare,but also narrowing the welfare gap and promoting social equity.This paper uses the 2012 and 2013 China Comprehensive Social Survey(CGSS)database to assess the impact of fiscal transparency on subjective well-being.The study finds that fiscal transparency significantly improved the well-being of Chinese residents and remained stable after overcoming endogeneity.Moreover,the estimates of the clustered samples show that fiscal transparency has a greater impact on the well-being of the Midwest,rural and low-income residents than in the eastern,urban,and high-income residents,indicating that it is conducive to narrowing the happiness gap.Finally,this paper examines the economic impact mechanism of fiscal transparency and finds that it mainly affects residents’happiness by improving the input efficiency and supply level of basic public goods rather than increasing public expenditure.Moreover,the mechanism of fiscal transparency affects the happiness of different income groups is also different,the highincome class is more concerned about the efficiency of public goods supply,while the low-income class is more concerned about the level of public goods supply.